Earlier this month, the A-Leagues released a hype video commemorating the imminent commencement of its 20th season. If you're taking the time to read this article, you've probably already seen it; the shrinking presence that the Australian top flights have in the media landscape forces those who are still engaged with the competition to actively seek out coverage of it.
In case you haven't, here it is:
A lot can happen in 20 years. In the case of the A-Leagues, just about everything has 🇦🇺🇳🇿⚽️
— Isuzu UTE A-League (@aleaguemen) October 8, 2024
Here's to another 20 years of OUR leagues - and many more.
The 20th season of the Isuzu UTE A-League kicks off on October 18. The Ninja A-League returns November 1. pic.twitter.com/w8HictzAIs
The response was swift and overwhelming; people loved it.
They mostly loved it for the same reason they loved the A-League: because it was theirs. This wasn't some contrived attempt to appeal to a mythical mainstream by pretending to be something the league wasn't. It was a celebration of what made the A-League, the A-League. Its highs and its lows, its heroes and villains, its memes and its dreams and, above all else, acknowledged they all belonged to those who have devoted a part of themselves to making the competition what it is. Everyone who has given something to the league, be it their sweat on the pitch, their voice in the stands, or their time and devotion to help spread the word owns a part of the A-League Men and the A-League Women, and this video embraced that.
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But exercises in soaring rhetoric aside, what the advertisement also did was show the depth of affection that still exists for the A-Leagues amongst a rusted-on group of hardcore fans. Shrinking in number as they may be, and as much as the league -- or to be more accurate, those entrusted with running it -- can infuriate them, this cohort still holds a deep affinity with the competitions, and they want to see the league and their club within it thrive. Most importantly, it provides them with a sense of belonging, a sense of community, and a sense of pride. Sure, it might be nonsense at times, but it's their nonsense. And it makes them happy.
Well, it sometimes makes them happy. Misery is more the default setting when you're following sport, interspersed by the rare moments of sheer bliss that make the intervening periods of heartache worth it. Suffering builds character, after all.
Heading into the first season of what has been described as a new "football focused" A-Leagues -- which could be more accurately summarised as the league not having the funds to do much more than focus on the basics of operating the sport -- the content of the video, and the response, gives rise to hope that those in charge of the league in its new era of austerity-forced back-to-basics have recognised their priorities. It's not trying to convert fans of the AFL, the NRL, or any other rival codes to the game, nor is it attempting to cajole those who follow sides in Europe to abandon those ties in favour of their local A-League outfit.
These people can't be dismissed, of course, but what their own advertisement has shown is that there are tens of thousands of people who were once engaged with the A-League, who were passionate about the A-League, that now are not. Trying to win back these sorts, the ones who have already shown that they're willing to back the league and, nearly a decade ago now, helped lift the competition into something that felt like it was riding the crest of a wave to mainstream prominence, would completely alter its direction for the better.
Thursday's backflip to reinstate goal difference and goals scored as the preferred criteria for breaking ties on the table was promising in this regard. Yes, it may have seemed obvious, so obvious that most are still trying to figure out why the league made the change in the first place; let alone why they subsequently didn't tell anybody, even themselves apparently, about it. But at the same time, absolutely none would have been surprised if the league had simply soldiered on, in the fine tradition of modern existence wherein those in charge aren't out of touch, it's the consumers who are wrong. Instead, there was a recognition of an error and, at the first opportunity to do so, a rectification without the need for protest or pressure campaigns. Anyone who has remained with the A-Leagues through thick and thin will know that this is notable in and of itself.
Which brings us to another important thing that featured in the A-Leagues' celebration of its 20 years. Or, more accurately, what didn't: suits. The video featured people in suits, yes -- Aurelio Vidmar is wearing a rather nice one when he calls Adelaide a "pissant town" -- but not the sort that occupies the boardrooms and executive offices around the world. These figures play an important role in keeping the competition running, undoubtedly, but theirs is ultimately a facilitating role, at its best when they are not making the news but, instead, putting their clubs and players in a position to do so.
Absent in the league's celebration of its first 20 years, for instance, was the sale of Grand Final rights to Destination NSW, or the ownership sagas that have threatened to kill Canberra United and the Newcastle Jets. So too were the strategic miscalculations that led to the collapse of Keep Up and mass redundancies, nor the resulting impact on the lives of many of the aforementioned people who had made it their mission to grow the game and spread the word.
What the league's own celebration of its history tells us is that the A-League Men and the A-League Women are at their best when they're simply being football leagues. They're at their best when the players on the pitch, the coaches in the dugout and the culture that develops around clubs become the stars of the show. They thrive when fans are driven by disdain not for those in charge of the game but, instead, for their derby rivals, and when their focus isn't on the viability of the league's balance sheet but on how much their club might get for the latest shining star coming through their academy, and how that may be reinvested.
Indeed, it would seem the best thing that the A-League can do to get people to love the competition, to win back those who became disillusioned and walked away, is to simply not give them a reason to. It's to do the important and, yes, underappreciated work to provide a framework for the league and then let it do its thing.
The obvious elephant in the room with all this, of course, is that while the league's greatest strength is the sense of ownership and affection its followers feel, it remains a private, for-profit competition. It is walled-off from the rest of the Australian football pyramid and, with Football Australia still silent on a National Second Tier competition in 2025, that doesn't seem likely to change any time soon. The announcement earlier in the week that Central Coast Mariners chairman Richard Peil was handing back the club to absent owner Mike Charlesworth -- who himself will likely hand the club's licence back to the A-League at the end of the season -- due to the financial challenges faced with funding the club has provided fresh exposure to the ongoing sustainability issues that haunt most of the clubs. Football clubs around the world aren't generally profit machines, but the A-Leagues' model almost needs them to be.
In the immediate term, though, what seems obvious is that the A-Leagues are at their best when they're being the A-Leagues; when they're allowed to be good, bad, stupid, brilliant, beautiful, ugly, and every other kind of adjective that comes to mind whenever that masterful video rolls. The competition can achieve that, then the sky's the limit for the next 20 seasons.